The present disclosure relates in general to monitoring and responding to emergency medical events. More specifically, the present disclosure relates to automated computing systems and methodologies to initiate or take over control of an autonomous vehicle operating system in response to detecting an emergency medical event of a vehicle occupant during a journey.
A vehicle driver experiencing a medical emergency such as a heart attack or a stroke during a journey may not be capable of sufficiently interacting with the vehicle to direct it to a place of assistance. Medical emergency events leading to incapacity or impairment of a vehicle driver can lead to accidents involving property damage, injury or death. Even if the vehicle occupant experiencing the emergency event is a passenger and another occupant is operating in the vehicle, the vehicle operator may or may not know or be able to execute with precision and speed the proper sequence of actions that are necessary to respond effectively to the medical emergency event. For many emergency medical events, the success rate of the emergency response treatment depends on how quickly the treatment can be administered after the start of the emergency medical event.
It would be beneficial to provide automated computing systems and methodologies that take control of a vehicle in response to detecting an emergency medical event of a vehicle occupant during a journey.